I go “hawab” anytime a player isn’t willing to adapt playstyle to what content they are doing or gear they are wearing. Is it really that fun to roll renews nothing will have you try something else for a change? I’ve been playing for long enough to have seen group rotations to conserve mana, priests in demand for their cc abilities, 23/38/0 with improved Divine Spirit, Greater Heal stopcasting on tanks, spirit buffed, spirit nerfed, spirit buffed again, Circle of Healing spam, downranking heals to be able to cast longer, serpendity-hasted prayer of healing, renewspam, discipline as pvp-healers, disipline as tankhealers, discipline as raidhealers… I could write a novel about the changes. I admit it would likely be a not very fancy read but still. One of the reasons I stick to my priest is that it has been in constant evolution. And I love it. I think everyone should try a change every now and then. it will do you good. Going back if it fails only cost a maximum of fifty gold at the trainer.

Continuing my subject from before. If you stumble here and say to yourself “but hey, what about my beginner ilevel 232 tiers then?”. Would it be worth going for the lowest level T10 over them. There is a lot of badges that need to be collected from heroics to get them. I’m not as certain on this as I haven’t tried them in action in a similarly geared 10-man or anything and I haven’t been forced to compare stats on them.

The easy answer would be that if you can get into ICC10 to get the badges faster than just by running heroics then you probably already sport some ToC25 normal gear or similar and you are facing another issue to begin with – that the lowest T10 is more often than not downgrades from the normal 25-man T9. It may actually be beneficial to try to get into some 25-man ToC pugs while saving up frost emblems to get the T10 or some other higher level frost emblem gear.

This is something that is really annoying with the healer priest T10. To maximize your gear you would want to aquire gear from badges that will be kept in your bags until you can upgrade them with dropped tokens. At that point you will then find yourself in demand of crafted gear and other stuff that keeps some of your newly aquired upgraded T10 in your bags until you can get your hands on the tokens that drops inthe heroic version. Now, try to convince that raid leader that you need those tokens because otherwise you won’t be able to upgrade your gear in the heroics later on…

Back on track, to T9 or to T10 at lower item levels… since the T10 setbonuses won’t do as much for you at the content you are likely doing I’d say go for the 25-man T9 first and save up those frost emblems. If you run with a guild that you can forsee will hand you some tokens to upgrade your T10 pretty soon then feel free to pick the tier pieces otherwise go straight for the itemlevel 264 emblem gear.

Also do yourself a favor and just skip over the lowest level T9 unless you already have them because they aren’t really worth spending your hard earned badges on anymore.

I’m ranting about gear again so I will leave it there…

I do go ‘bwha” when priests say “but I dont use Flash Heal, I use renew”. It makes me wonder what they are doing with their SOL procs. Mmmm raid healing goodness- 3 GCDs with 13 targets healed. yes please. While it is RNG… it makes me really wonder.

With proper CD management, and/or a Power Aura the increase in your effective healing as holy with COH goes up notably… and when I’ve tank healed as Disc….especially on Heroic ICC10 (this week Heroic ICC25) the tanks get ROCKED… so any additional burst healing on them will be appreciated.

The only downside Ive found is that 4pc brings your crit up higher, so you’ll need strong other items (or gems) to balance haste where you want it.

If you run with the normal 25-man T9 (ilevel 245) then the increase in stats from the offset ilevel 264 items outweighs in almost all cases (sanctified T10, crafted gear, badges gear). This would be the case for anyone that didn’t have heroic mode Anub’arak on farm.

Many higher end raiding priests have 2 pieces of the heroic version T9 (ilevel 258) though and keeping them versus the “Sanctified” upgraded T10 (ilevel 264) i where it gets tricky. The heroic version T9 is strong enough to not fall that much behind while still providing the excellent setbonus, especially on the pieces that have less valuable upgrade options.

Then again when you eventually get the hands on the heroic version of T10 eventually most of the tier pieces are best in slot anyway and the setbonus comes naturally, but then again… you need to beat the lich king first

In some of the later ICC fights, and ICC hard modes (10 & 25), the tanks get hit hard & the raid takes a shit ton of damage. The 4 pc set bonus, as derevka mentioned, does proc well more than the math would lead you to believe – it’s not uncommon for strings or 3, 4 or even 5 or more procs on this. It makes me all giggly.

I’ve found even if there’s a break in heavy damage on the tank at the time, there is always someone in the raid that could use a little penance and DA lovin’, and this is especially nice in ten mans.

I’m still accumulating the data for a more official post, but as it stands for a tank healer, it’s worth it. I’m going to say it’s worth it for a raid healer as well.

The two piece is still weak – in theory it sounds good, but after log dissection, it ranks high on overheal. It’s pretty nice on Dreamwalker.